Tuzani.
First let one fall, and the survivor then
May open straight the doors.
Mendoza.
Well said.
[631] This character of Lope de Figueroa may serve as a specimen of the way in which Calderon gave life and interest to many of his dramas. Lope is an historical personage, and figures largely in the second volume of Hita’s “Guerras,” as well as elsewhere. He was the commander under whom Cervantes served in Italy, and probably in Portugal, when he was in the Tercio de Flándes,—the Flanders regiment,—one of the best bodies of troops in the armies of Philip II. Lope de Figueroa appears again, and still more prominently, in another good play of Calderon, “El Alcalde de Zalamea,” the last in the common collection. Its hero is a peasant, finely sketched, partly from Lope de Vega’s Mendo, in the “Cuerdo en su Casa”; and it is said at the end that it is a true story, whose scene is laid in 1581, at the very time Philip II. was advancing toward Lisbon, and when Cervantes was probably with this regiment at Zalamea.
[632] About this time, there was a strong disposition shown by the overweening sensibility of Spanish loyalty to relieve the memory of Peter the Cruel from the heavy imputations left resting on it by Pedro de Ayala, of which I have taken notice, (Period I., chap. 9, note 17), and of which traces may be found in Moreto, and the other dramatists of the reign of Philip IV. Pedro appears also in the “Niña de Plata” of Lope de Vega, but with less strongly marked attributes.
El amor te adora, el honor te aborrece,
Y así el uno te mata, y el otro te avisa: